The Absence of Color
by annaisadinosaur
Summary: "He was just an empty slate constantly taking whatever form he pleased, no identity to himself, just a passing reflection in the water." / In which Sirius Black wonders who he really is.


The sun was beating down on Sirius through the window at some unbearable degree and he didn't say a word. He was instead thinking very, very hard that he might like _not_ to sweat in these new robes, but stubborn beads of perspiration slipped down his temple and he thought very, very hard instead that he might like no one to notice.

Behind him, his mother gazed hard at him in the mirror, scrutinizing the creases of the clothing and the way they fit against his small, boyish frame. At his side, only half-way visible in the mirror, stood the shop lady, whatever her name was, a stern looking woman, such an impossible combination of tall and thin he half suspected she did nothing but stand behind her customers everyday and just look at herself. Further removed was Mr. Black, sullen and dark in appearance, with a normally displeased expression carved into his face.

The heat was making him itchy, or perhaps that was just his woolen robes, but either way, he felt rather uncomfortable and self-conscious with all three pairs of eyes on him, judging him for something he wasn't sure he could control. He thought they were all watching and waiting for different reasons, and all entirely missing the point. He was still going to school to _learn_, after all, wasn't he? Or had that changed sometime between then and now?

But again Sirius said nothing. His mother prodded him in the back to correct his posture, and he quickly straightened his back.

She stared a moment more, smoothed out one of his shoulders, and then with the swiftest of movements, nodded her head. The atmosphere broke completely when she smiled, looking proudly upon her oldest son.

"He'll make such a marvelous Black," she said, turning to her husband imploringly for his response, "don't you think?"

Long after they left the shop, his mother's words rang in his head. He followed closely on her heel as they paved way through Diagon Alley, a boy walking with the poise and restraint of a man. He tried very hard not to meet anyone's eye as they passed. It was what his mother always said; you couldn't possibly know _who_ was a mudblood on the street.

He was a Black. He cemented this into his mind as they waded through their school shopping. Being a Black _meant_ something, meant he'd been born into a seat he had yet to fill. That was the Sirius everyone liked, the boy who fit against everyone like a clay mold, just the person you needed him to be. He belonged there. Somewhere. Some-there. That was important.

And, really, he imagined, so was he.

* * *

But James Potter was different.

Sirius didn't know quite what it was. James was at least two inches taller than him, quite apparent in his thin, gangly awkwardness, matched with spectacles too large for his face. He had hair that went in all different directions, straight up in the back, and on his mouth, a happy, lopsided grin.

_Different_ didn't quite encompass it, because there Sirius was, wearing his expensive robes with his hair slicked back and well groomed, _too _groomed, with his shoulders tight and his mouth impassive. Here was Sirius Black, the boy who acted like a man, and James Potter, the boy who acted like, well, a boy. Sirius suddenly felt rather stupid sitting as he was. Like he didn't matter at all. Like he'd gotten it all so very wrong.

So when the boy talked, Sirius absorbed every word, every mannerism and every last quirk. If there was anything Sirius was good at, it was absorbing. There were Metamorphagi scattered all throughout his family tree, and while he evidently had not inherited the physical trait, internally he shifted and changed so frequently he was becoming a stranger to himself.

He liked James, and that was different, too. Normally he lost himself to others' ravenous acceptance because he knew he _ought_ to like them, and he was almost entirely dumbfounded when he realized it wasn't that he needed James's friendship at all—no, quite rationally, being a Black, he needed the very opposite—but that he _wanted_ it. Craved it, really, and in such a quick, unsteady manner, too. The bottom tier of addiction.

And it was not until the end of the train ride, when Sirius had played along to every beat, lost himself to recklessness and joking and everything he had never been before, when James proclaimed, "We're going to be the best of mates, you and me, Sirius. This school thing is off to a good start, don't you think?" that Sirius changed his mind on where he really ought to belong.

* * *

And it was a joyous reign for the few months that it survived. But Sirius had to come home eventually. That was the way of the world. It was wonderful until it ended, and things never failed to end.

In his bedroom, the ceiling was lit with the snow outside his window, winter streaming into his eyes and coursing a chill over his body like an infinite wave. Mind blank and buzzing and numb, he could hear traces of conversation trailing up the stairs, creeping beneath his door. He rolled over in his bed and buried his face in his pillow.

Minutes ago, Sirius had been in the middle of his parent's lavish Christmas party and was laughing loudly and really thought himself quite clever. Of all the things Sirius had ever been, _prankster_ had never been among them, so of course when Sirius vanished all of the chairs in the house—even the ones that had been, at that point, occupied, yes—no one expected it or even knew how to react. Being sorted into Gryffindor had been bad enough for his parents' embarrassment, but now he was banished to his bedroom altogether.

This was new. He rolled his head to face the window, and with a long sigh, stared out into the world. Across the street, in the neighbors' yard, was a boy building a snowman with his father. It wasn't the first winter he'd ever seen them out in the snow together, but now it had a different effect on him. James probably built snowmen with his dad all the time. They had snowball fights and drank cocoa and talked in front of the fireplace in the middle of the night.

It was different here, at home. His gaze, which was once short and polite and never inclusive, was now heavy with longing. He longed for things in random, dusty corners and at the bottom of the windowsill and tucked into pages of books in the family library. He wasn't sure what he longed for, for he'd never known it but in glimpses of other people's lives. Sirius just knew he was missing something, and that was enough to drive anyone into madness.

Eventually, when the sun began to sink into the sky, Sirius moved to close the blinds. When they came down, his eyes lingered on the finality of it, and he mentally willed himself to keep them closed for a while.

Because he wasn't _mad_.

Stupid, probably, that was all.

He leaned against the window, his back pressing into the blades of the blinds, and closed his eyes. Ever so gently he drifted off to sleep, thinking that he had all he needed here, in this place that he belonged, in the house that had only ever nurtured him and kept him safe and nothing more.

Maybe his parents were right. Those... those—_mudbloods_—they just...

But he fell asleep before he could finish the thought.

* * *

Looking into James's face and realizing that his expression was one Sirius never seen on him was sort of like drifting out of a deep sleep, slow and groggy and hazy, the sound of his voice sparking louder and louder in his head.

"What _was_ that?" James said, or at least, Sirius thought he said, but a moment too late, realized was not simply _saying_ at all. Much, much louder, and rather angrily... "Since when do you care about blood? When did that start mattering to you? What happened to being nothing like your family?"

Remus had gone now. He was glad for this, which was nice, because he had not been glad for much lately. He felt bad for Remus; there was something off about him, something that he felt inclined to pity, and that was strange for an eleven year old boy to feel. So he did what every rational Black would have done; he got him to go away. And stay away.

Even if he wasn't even _technically_ a mudblood, he was half of one, right? And when Sirius had called him out on it, it had certainly affected him properly, hadn't it?

"I'm nothing like them," said Sirius breathlessly, and he was not sure if he was relieved or crestfallen to decide upon this fact. He was, however, decidedly upset that James was so deeply bothered. They weren't _really _mates with Remus before then, so was he supposed to know? How was he supposed to emulate James in all his great glorified likeness if he was infinitely different every given moment? "I'm sorry," he said further, finding it necessary, fitting, because he was so very much sorry for so many different reasons, "I'm sorry, but I'm not them."

"I don't _care_ who you're related to, but I know that I thought you were better than that... I could have sworn you were!"

"I'm _nothing_—"

"I don't know who you are," said James, bitterly, backing away from Sirius, and before he finally set off, he said, again, "I just... I don't know."

He slammed the door on his way out, his parting message reverberating quite clearly in Sirius's head. The dormitory had collapsed in darkness and he was alone, gazing into nothing, yearning and falling and covered in the dirt of failure. Sirius buried his face in his hands and breathed it in, this scent of surrender and so much terrible failure, and gave in.

He was nothing like his family. He was meant to be nothing like his family. That was what James had said. That was what he was going to believe.

* * *

Screaming. Someone was screaming, and right in Sirius's ear, too, loud and in pitiful anguish, a heart broken once and then broken again with each dying sound. It seemed to drift to his awareness through the half-darkness that it was he who was making the pained noise, and then slowly it ceased, the scathing screams fading from his throat.

There had been something so much different about—about—_him_—but, oh, it hurt so much to even think—he couldn't—his name—his friend—his—his _James_—and there was so much different about Sirius now, Sirius the stupid, stupid bastard that—oh, god, and it was all his fault—he might have very well drawn the wand that killed them himself—there would have been no difference—it was all his fault...

The grimy dark floor met his face as he convulsed in sobs, or perhaps it was the other way around.

After all this time, Sirius had been different, or he had thought himself quite different. He'd laughed. He'd gotten into more trouble than he could account for. He'd loved. He'd fought for what he believed in. He'd had a family scattered across many, and he'd _been_ loved. That made all the difference, he'd thought, that made _him_ different. Happy, content, _alive_.

But he wasn't different. Evidently. Such a very harsh evidently. He was just an empty slate constantly taking whatever form he pleased, no identity to himself, just a passing reflection in the water. And now he was alone, and so he was so painfully _no one_ that it hurt just to breathe. It was an emptiness within his chest that beat and throbbed mercilessly against the long string of thoughts that weren't really his own. Except for one. One blazed in his mind and he recognized as his own.

_I don't know who I am._

Because he was a Black, and anyone who knew anything knew that black was not a color. It was simply the absence of it.

* * *

**A/N: Thanks for reading! You're lovely! **

**Written for the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition, Round 4, with "sadness," and the prompts stupid, black, and addiction. **

**CHUDLEY CANNONS! :) **


End file.
